hild!"

But as the sound of her mother's voice reached her ear, Calabash seemed
suddenly to wake up from her lethargy, she raised her head, and, with a
wild and almost frenzied cry, exclaimed:

"Away! Leave me! And if there be a hell, may it receive you!"

"My child," repeated the widow, "let us embrace for the last time!"

"Do not approach me!" cried the distracted girl, violently repulsing her
mother; "you have been my ruin in this world and the next!"

"Then forgive me, ere I die!"

"Never, never!" exclaimed Calabash; and then, totally exhausted by the
effort she had made, she sank back in the arms of the assistants.

A cloud passed over the hitherto stern features of the widow, and a
moisture was momentarily visible on her glowing eyeballs. At this
instant she encountered the pitying looks of her son. After a trifling
hesitation, during which she seemed to be undergoing some powerful
internal conflict, she said:

"And you?"

Sobbing violently, Martial threw himself into his mother's arms.

"Enough!" said the widow, conquering her emotion, and withdrawing
herself from the close embrace of her son; "I am keeping this gentleman
waiting," pointing to the executioner; then, hurrying towards a chair,
she resolutely seated herself, and the gleam of maternal sensibility she
had exhibited was for ever extinguished.

"Do not stay here," said the old soldier, approaching Martial with an
air of kindness. "Come this way," continued he, leading him, while
Martial, stupefied by horror, followed him mechanically.

The almost expiring Calabash having been supported to a chair by the two
assistants, one sustained her all but inanimate form, while the other
tied her hands behind with fine but excessively strong whipcord, knotted
into the most inextricable meshes, while with a cord of the same
description he secured her feet, allowing her just so much liberty as
would enable her to proceed slowly to her last destination. The widow
having borne a similar pinioning with the most imperturbable composure,
the executioner, drawing from his pocket a pair of huge scissors, said
to her with considerable civility:

"Be good enough to stoop your head, madame."

Yielding immediate obedience to the request, the widow said:

"We have been good customers to you; you have had my husband in your
hands, and now you have his wife and daughter!"

Without making any reply, the executioner began to cut the long gray
hairs of the prisoner